Authors

Discussion

This paper examines the proselytising efforts of the Russian Slavophile philosopher Aleksei Khomiakov (1804–1860), who sought to persuade a group of High Anglican churchmen to abandon their national church and embrace Russian Orthodoxy. I use this episode in Khomiakov’s career as a case study to shed light on the crisis of masculinity under Nicholas I and to explore how Russian male intellectuals attempted to overcome it. My analysis of Khomiakov’s engagement with British culture reveals his desire to reconstruct Russian masculinity as integrating elements of British muscular Christianity in order to set an alternative model to the Russian hegemonic masculinity imposed by the autocratic state. Given that the adoption of British model stood in tension with Khomiakov’s own anti-Western stance, the conversion of Britain to Orthodoxy represented more than a religious project. Khomiakov believed that Russia had been colonised by Western ideas since the reign of Peter the Great and his dream of converting Britain – followed by all of Europe – into Orthodoxy meant a symbolic act of counter-colonisation of the West. In this rebalanced relationship, Khomiakov envisioned the possibility of adopting British masculine ideals not as subjugation but as an equal, brotherly exchange.